


Drowning Men

by Yahtzee



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Blow Jobs, Dry Humping, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Manpain, Masturbation in Shower, Prostitution, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con References, Telepathic Sex, sexual abuse of child discussed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-24
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 16:41:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Very quietly, Charles says, “Can you show me?”</p><p>“No.” Erik looks at him again, then, his expression as steely as Charles has ever seen it. His resolve is even stronger than his pain. “To show you this would be to make you share it, and I would never do that to you. Never.”'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Charles

Charles normally knows when he’s wanted.

A girl he’s been talking to for hours, a guy across the bar, it’s all the same: They look at him and he knows, through the language of the mind, that this can end in bed if he chooses. This gift isn’t as big a boon as he suspects most might think – feeling the contempt or amusement of unspoken rejections grinds on the soul. More troublingly, desire comes from unexpected people, sometimes in disturbing forms, and if he’s not guarded in his mind, it can feel almost like an assault.

But it does mean that Charles is used to having clear-cut boundaries. He is desired or he is not. He has a chance or he doesn’t. He knows where he stands.

Except when it comes to Erik.

Since the first moment he slid his arm around Erik in the frigid ocean, even as he fought to tow him to safety, Charles knew there was a connection between them … one that could take many different forms. Since an hour after that, when he sat by Erik in the medical bay as they were both still cold and shaking, draped in towels, shoulders touching – since then, Charles has known what form he wanted that connection to take.

He has waited, though. He’s waited for Erik to get his bearings, to recover from the crushing defeat at Shaw’s hands. He’s waited for each of them to know one another better. (Charles has learned the hard way that his understanding of intimacy isn’t like that of those encased within their own minds.)

And yes, he has waited because he wants to know if Erik desires him too. But it’s been weeks now, and he still has no clue.

No. That’s not right. Erik does want him. His thoughts linger on Charles, the same way Charles’ do on Erik. His eyes follow Charles across the room. He likes pleasing Charles with small favors and witty remarks, enjoys debating politics with him, finds excuses to end every night with them playing chess and drinking wine alone together in one of the more remote rooms of the Xavier mansion. It doesn’t require telepathy to tell Charles what that means.

However, what telepathy tells Charles is rather different.

When they sit up late at night, white queen closing in on black king, cabernet sauvignon no more than a rosy ring at the bottom of the crystal glasses, their eyes will meet and Charles feels it: A wave of the deepest longing, the most urgent lust he’s ever known.

But even as Charles tries to steady himself enough to respond, he’s hit by Erik’s next reaction.

Revulsion.

It’s as if even the idea of touching Charles causes him pain.

Afterward, somebody wins, somebody loses, and they go to their separate rooms alone. Erik, by then, is usually determined, even depressed – and remains so the next morning. Breakfast is often terse. Then Erik slowly warms as the hours pass, daring to smile by lunchtime, putting a hand on Charles’ arm by midafternoon, and finally, after dusk, leading them both back to the chessboard. The connection they have will not be denied – but it can apparently be infinitely delayed. It’s as if Erik falls in love with him every single day, taking them right to the brink, then pulling away.

It’s brought Charles to a precipice of his own. Insomnia is his only bed partner; exhaustion weighs on him now. He feels led on, rejected – unfair, because only his telepathy lets him know that there’s anything to this than friendship and his own vain hopes.

But what? Perhaps it would be easier to walk away if he just knew why Erik would come no closer.

Or – he thinks one night, surreptitiously studying the firm muscles of Erik’s body beneath his black turtleneck – perhaps not.

“The classic error, my friend.” Erik slides his rook to a place where Charles’ knight is in great danger.

Charles swears. “Obviously I haven’t got my mind on the game.”

“Haven’t you?” Erik’s voice is suddenly tight.

The precipice is close. Let them fall off together.

Slowly Charles lifts his gaze from the black and white squares to meet Erik’s eyes. His pulse quickens. Erik’s soul is too roiled with conflict for Charles to sense anything beyond it. Voice hardly more than a whisper, Charles says, “No. I can’t think of the game at all. Only – only the players.”

Again, that wild, yearning desire that makes Charles feel as if he can hardly breathe.

Then again, the revulsion. Erik turns his head slightly to the side, breaking their gaze.

Charles comes to a terrible conclusion and decides it must be faced. “I’m sorry, my friend.”

“What for?” Erik still won’t look at him.

“Let’s not pretend that I don’t – that I can’t – that I haven’t done what I must have done.” Shame is flushing his cheeks with heat, but Charles is determined to get this out. “What you’re feeling can only be something I’m projecting on you. My own emotions, getting the better of me. I haven’t done that since adolescence – thought I had better control now, but – well. From the way you react, I realize it must horrify you.” Charles’ gift informed him years ago that homosexual desire was far more common than people admitted, and nothing to be ashamed of, but the prejudices of the world still held sway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. Against your will, I would never try to – I wouldn’t.”

Now Erik turns to stare at him, his emotional reaction the dull white noise of shock. “Projecting on me?”

Charles attempts to smile, though it feels as if his heart is being carved out by a dull knife. “I’ll get the better of it. Your friendship means the world to me, Erik. I hope I haven’t endangered it with my … carelessness.”

A moment of silence follows, long enough for Charles to fill it with every horrible thing that Erik could now say.

What Erik actually says is, “You think you’re projecting your feelings onto me?” He laughs, a broken sound so sad that Charles looks up, startled – though that’s nothing compared to the jolt he feels when Erik lays one hand on Charles’ forearm. As Charles holds his breath, Erik says, “The classic error. My friend, you can be a fool.”

Then he pulls Charles close and crushes them together in a kiss.

Charles has never been kissed like this. Never. Erik’s hands clutch him so fiercely that his fingers seem to rend at Charles’ flesh, but the pain is nearly as sweet as the taste of Erik’s open mouth. Their lips come together again and again – half a bite, half a blow – and yet there’s a fragility to it too: A knowledge that they both can break, that they are both very close to breaking.

The chessboard falls to the floor; the pieces scatter upon the hardwood in a new game, one without squares or rules. Charles winds his hands in Erik’s black hair, ready to pull him toward the nearest bed, onto the bench, against the wall, the floor, wherever –

\--when he feels the repugnance again, shuddering through Erik even more strongly than their mutual need. It’s like being kicked in the gut for Charles, but so infinitely worse for Erik. The desolation that follows within Erik is so bottomless that it reminds Charles of that moment when they met, when Erik was on the verge of choosing death rather than facing another defeat.

They pull apart, panting for breath. For a long moment, neither can speak.

Finally Charles says, voice wobbly, “Erik, tell me what’s wrong.”

Erik clutches his hands into fists in his wild hair. “I can’t. Charles, I can’t.” He doesn’t mean that he can’t tell. He means that he cannot be with him as his lover. But why not?

The truth is no doubt complicated, to judge by the jagged edges and layers and conflicts Charles senses on the surface of Erik’s mind; it’s like looking at the sea after a shipwreck, all flotsam and jetsam bobbing about in the waves, no coherent form left. Very quietly, Charles says, “Can you show me?”

“No.” Erik looks at him again, then, his expression as steely as Charles has ever seen it. His resolve is even stronger than his pain. “To show you this would be to make you share it, and I would never do that to you. Never.”

Unspoken is Erik’s plea for Charles to pry no further with his gifts of the mind. Though Charles hates it, he’ll obey.

Instead he takes one of Erik’s broad hands in both of his. “Then talk to me. Please.”

Erik pulls his hand away, but it’s not a rejection; he rises to pace, which sometimes makes it easier to speak. He walks the length of the study twice, Charles watching in silence, before he finds his first words. “You know that Shaw was my captor at Buchenwald. My torturer. My mother’s murderer.”

“Yes.” Before learning about Sebastian Shaw, Charles had thought it impossible to truly hate a man you’d never met. Now he realizes he hadn’t even understood what hate was.

“And yet you still don’t know it all.” Erik rakes his hands over his head, down the back of his neck, agitated almost beyond self control. “He tried everything he could think of to make me angry and hurt. To provoke my powers. Everything, Charles. What most people don’t realize – you see, at the camps, they made the prisoners service the guards in every way. Even … even in brothels.”

The truth slips into Charles, a wound as sliver-thin and deadly as the blade of a stiletto. He bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep his rage in check, because his feelings are not what count here. Erik must get this out.

“Sometimes Shaw put me in the brothels,” Erik whispers. “Most of the guards wanted to abuse the poor women, but there were those who would rape a boy. Those who came back time and time again for the same fun. They paid for the pleasure, and Shaw would jangle the money in his hand.” After a long silence, he adds, “Then he would make me try to move the coins.”

“Dear God.” Charles can contain himself no more. He rises, goes to Erik, holds open his arms – but Erik shrinks back.

“Don’t you see? What Shaw did, what he let the guards do – it’s poisoned sex for me.” Wearily Erik leans against the window seat; the moonlight flooding in behind him turns his form into a shadow. “I’ve been with women. Been with men. It doesn’t matter. As soon as they begin to touch me, I hate them. I get myself off and get away from them as fast as I can, because my lovers disgust me.” Even in the shadows, Charles can make our Erik’s tormented eyes. “And I can’t – Charles, I can never let myself feel that way about you. If I lost you, it would be the final loss. The one I couldn’t bear.”

“You won’t. You couldn’t.” It’s impossible that they could ever be parted. Charles has known that since that first moment in the waters.

“Don’t ask me to go further. I shouldn’t even have given in to the impulse to – ” His voice trails off, and Erik’s gaze drifts toward Charles’ lips, no doubt still swollen and red from their kisses. “I’m sorry.”

Charles knows that Erik has earned his saturnine nature, his pessimism about the world. But from the moment they met, his mission has been to keep Erik from drowning.

“We’re different,” he whispers. “You know that. This isn’t only about desire.”

Erik shakes his head, meaning that no, it isn’t mere arousal binding them together, and no, they aren’t different enough to escape his fate.

Stepping closer, Charles says, “I feel what you feel. That means I can help you get past this.”

“There’s no getting past it.”

“We have to try,” Charles insists, coming near enough for them to touch. “We’ll take our time. Weeks, or months. Years, if that’s what it has to be.”

This earns him a raised eyebrow and Erik’s sardonic glare. “Years? You’ll spend years waiting for me while your own bed stays empty?”

Dire thought, but – “Yes. Years. If that’s what it has to be.” Charles takes the final leap from the precipice. “I love you.”

Erik breathes out sharply, half a sob. “God help you.”

“God help us both.”

With a sigh, Erik surrenders. His arms go around Charles’ waist. This isn’t about sex; it’s about raw need, which is why the moment goes on and on, long enough for Charles to comb through Erik’s hair with his fingers, to stroke his back, to whisper wordless comfort against his temple and his cheek. Long enough for Erik to fight the urge to cry, and to win. Charles knows he needs to win.

When at last Erik is calmer, Charles takes one of his hands and says, “Let’s go to bed.”

“Charles – ”

“To sleep.” He says this firmly, backs it with a wave of resolve for Erik to feel so he will believe it. “Only to sleep. But – I want you near me. Please.”

Although Erik hesitates, at long last he nods.

They travel up to Charles’ room, which is farther away from any of the others. It is also the least formal; the others were rooms for important guests, furnished with Chippendale, carpeted by Aubusson. This one, on the other hand, has a few old model planes hanging in one corner and a threadbare blanket on the bed that the boy Charles would never let them throw away.

In silence, watching each other, they disrobe. Charles knows to stop at his T-shirt and briefs. Erik wears no undershirt – his chest is magnificent, broadly muscled and almost hairless – but he keeps his boxers on. The shorts are larger, almost baggy in the way Europeans wear them, but they don’t disguise the long curve of Erik’s cock, still half-hard from their first desperate kisses. It’s all Charles can do to keep his hands where they belong. Already Charles can feel the conflict ripping at Erik, the tug of war between his deepest needs and his inner self-hatred.

But Charles simply crawls into bed, scooting to the far side to make room for Erik, who gets in after. Erik lies there stiffly as Charles stretches one arm across his chest, perhaps thinking Charles doesn’t keep his bargains. Charles, however, knows better than to push. He nestles his head on Erik’s shoulder and breathes in the scent of his skin. That’s all.

For a moment he thinks of the boy Erik. He tries to imagine the kind of evil that would cast that child into a concentration camp’s brothel, but he can’t. It rips at him, the need to go back in time and fight for young Erik, to rescue him – the need and the impossibility. Tears spring to Charles’ eyes, so he keeps them closed.

Slowly, so slowly, Erik relaxes. Charles feels a wave of Erik’s relief washing over him – then comfort. Then love, so great and boundless that he is humbled to even witness it, much less be the subject of it.

Charles opens enough to let Erik know that he feels it – his own love and Erik’s too – and Erik puts one hand over Charles’ arm across his chest, as if afraid they’ll be pulled apart.

He grabbed at Charles’ arm that way when Charles dragged him up from the deep on the day they met.

**

Grayish dawn light greets Charles’ half-opened eyes as he stirs to wakefulness. Momentary confusion dissipates as he sees Erik lying next to him, wide awake and nearly naked – Charles remembers where they are, and why. He smiles drowsily. Even if they didn’t become lovers last night, they are each other’s love, and nothing can take that from them.

But the confusion returns when Erik touches him.

Erik’s fingers slide along Charles’ thin T-shirt to the band of his briefs, up again beneath the white cotton, against the hairy surface of his chest. When Charles gasps, Erik kisses him, hard and demanding. His tongue plunges into Charles’ mouth, thrusting deeper and shallower, then deeper again, in a mimicry of sex that makes Charles hard in an instant.

They pull apart only so Charles can breathe. He gets out, “Erik – you said – ”

“Years.” There is nothing gentle about Erik’s smile. “You’re more patient than I, my friend. I can’t wait years for you.”

Now Erik’s hand finds Charles’ cock, and if his grip is electrifying through the briefs Charles can’t even imagine what it will be like when they’re naked. Arching his back in pleasure, he reaches for Erik in return – but is pushed away.

“No.” The words are ragged as Erik shoves Charles’ wrists above his head, back onto the bed. “Don’t touch me. Don’t even kiss me unless I’m kissing you.”

“Erik, _please_.”

“Don’t.” From Erik’s mind comes the ultimatum: If Charles makes even one move to pleasure Erik in return, Erik will stop. Otherwise, the loathing will come crashing down, and the moment will be ruined.

This isn’t how Charles wanted it to be. To get what he really wants, what they both need, he could wait – even now, as Erik reaches into his briefs and curls his fingers around Charles’ straining erection, which sends sweet fire soaring along every nerve ending he possesses.

But Erik can’t wait. This is what Erik wants. So this is what Charles will give him.

His body rigid, his hands still above his head as if Erik had handcuffed them there, Charles muffles a cry against the pillow as Erik slides down his body and takes Charles’ cock in his mouth. Erik’s tongue curls around him, a slippery caress, before he takes the shaft in one firm hand and starts to suck.

It’s too much. Not enough. Charles grabs the pillow so tightly he hears fabric rip; he wants to touch Erik as desperately as a drowning man wants air. The rhythm of it matches his heartbeat, quickens with the buck of his hips, until he feels his face getting hot and his breaths can’t fill his lungs. Through the chaos of his desire-maddened brain, Charles reaches out for Erik and finds the purest, most mindless lust he’s ever experienced. It’s as if Erik has emptied himself of anything but the need to see Charles come.

“Erik – ” Charles moans, struggling for control and losing it. The kick starts in his groin, zooms up to his brain and seizes him until he’s crying out, coming into Erik’s eager mouth, swallowed whole.

The last spasms make his whole body shake. Trembling, Charles holds one hand out to Erik – but Erik has already pushed himself from the foot of the bed. He stands there, looking down at the twisted sheets and Charles’ exposed body, and his gaze is harder than iron.

“It’s all right,” Erik says. He might be assessing whether their X-plane is ready to fly. “I don’t – it isn’t – I still love you.”

Although Charles’ muscles are still loose, his head swimming from the intensity of his orgasm, he manages to prop himself on his elbows. He feels Erik’s desperation to please Charles, his own incredible need in return – but his stronger fear of losing what they’ve found. So he tries, “Can you at least – you could come back to bed. Surely. Just lie beside me.”

“It has to be like this,” Erik insists as he reaches for his clothes on the nearby chair. His composure wavers for a moment as he finishes, “It’s enough for me to be able to love you.”

“Erik – ”

But Erik is already dressed enough to leave. “Tonight. You’ll see. We’ll make this work.” He walks away without a backward glance, and the door slams heavily behind him.


	2. Erik

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't the end! The story has grown longer on me, but I still thought I'd finish today -- before I woke up suffering from the Death Virus. But more is on the way, and soon.

Erik’s body aches for Charles. So he has to get away from him as soon as possible.

He hurries down the hallway, trousers unzipped, shirt unbuttoned, and the taste of sex still in his mouth. Charles is no doubt still lying in the bed they shared. Erik keeps the images in his mind – Charles half-naked, his mouth beneath Erik’s, his thigh taut against Erik’s spread palm – and he sharpens the edges, hones every detail.

Once he’s in his own room, one of the few with a private bath, he sheds his clothes as quickly as possible. His boxers snag on his rigid cock, which hurts with the need for release. Hands shaking, Erik turns on the shower almost hot enough to scald and climbs in. Then he wraps his hand around his erection, thinks again of Charles in that bed, the little catch in his throat as he came –

Water droplets shake from his jerking hand as Erik braces himself against the tile. _Charles_ , he thinks, and it sends him over the edge.

It’s not a real catharsis – orgasm is dulled for Erik, too fleeting, as if his body tries to hide his response from him. But it’s enough of a release to stop the ache.

Erik stands there a long time, allowing the water to wash over him. Steam fills the bathroom until it seems that he is lost in mist.

How can this work? It can’t. Charles is a grown man. He says he’d wait forever, and he probably means it, but he doesn’t know what Erik knows. He doesn’t understand that Erik can love a person but not a body. That this, here, alone with only the idea of Charles to touch him, is the only way Erik can let himself go and not be filled with loathing afterward.

Instead he’s filled with loneliness, with the knowledge that it should all be different – that it would be different but for Shaw, like so many other things in Erik’s life.

But that he can bear. He’s used to it. And someday Shaw will pay for this crime along with all the countless rest.

**

The younger ones – Erik can’t quite call them “kids” the way Charles does – are wild at breakfast, and thank goodness. Havok and Mystique argue about whether or not Elvis is still cool, and Darwin says Elvis is nothing without Little Richard, and Angel and Beast do the twist after Banshee cuts on the radio. Amid this clamor, it’s easier to disguise his reaction when Charles comes into the kitchen.

“Okay,” Mystique says immediately. “You were listening on your way here, right? So, tell us. Elvis yes or Elvis no?”

“Little Richard yes,” Charles says. As Darwin lifts his hands in triumph and new debates break out, Charles slips easily around Erik to pop bread into the toaster. His hand brushes along the small of Erik’s back. “Good morning.”

He speaks more quietly, for Erik alone, without making it obvious. Erik glances at him and sees no shade of the recrimination or hurt he’d expected. There’s much unsaid between them – the weight remains – but Charles’ gentle smile is not so different from the one he gave Erik when they awoke together. Maybe it will be all right. For now. “Good morning,” he says back, resting his palm on Charles’ shoulder slightly longer than he would have the day before.

The students notice nothing, because now “Runaround Sue” is on the radio. It’s all chatter and coffee and training schedules and pop songs for the next half hour, until they’re clearing things away at the end.

Erik steps into the butler’s pantry to stow the bread and cheese. Butler’s pantry! He’d had no idea such things existed before coming to this place. Charles had said, _it’s not as if we had a butler, it’s just part of the house,_ like that somehow equalized them.

Such thoughts drop away as Charles walks in after him, something in his hands, doesn’t matter what, because it’s clearly a pretext for him to slide the wooden door shut behind them.

When Charles’ arms go around his waist, Erik tenses at first. But Charles simply holds him, face in the curve of Erik’s neck, and Erik gives in to the embrace. Nothing more will happen, not with the students so near. It’s safe to stroke his hands through Charles’ hair, close his eyes and think of nothing but this moment.

He can love Charles even if his body can’t.

 _You’re all right?_ It’s the first mental touch Charles has tried since this morning – at least, the first Erik knows about. Paranoia never totally goes away around a mindreader.

“I am.” Erik prefers to answer with his voice. “And I love you.”

They kiss – brief and ragged. Charles puts his hands on either side of Erik’s face and tilts him downward, for another kiss on the forehead. Then Charles has the good sense to leave, asking no more.

Maybe this can work.

But the idea loses its power as soon as Erik thinks it, lingering only to mock him.

That’s the thing about Charles; he makes you believe in the impossible. You walk out on that high wire, plunge off the cliff, because he makes you believe there’s a safety net. Erik knows better.

Still, however long he and Charles can sustain this, Erik wants it. Needs it. He’ll take what he can get.

**

That night, blessedly, the students decide to drive into town for burgers and shakes. The mansion always seems quiet without them, but this evening the silence seems to stretch out for miles in all directions, as though the two of them were cocooned away from the rest of the world. Erik walks to the study where he and Charles so often spend their evenings, though he suspects they won’t even go through the pretense of chess tonight.

As he walks in, Charles – sitting in a leather armchair, LIFE magazine in his hands – says, “I actually enjoy the chess, so it’s not a pretense. Thought you did too.”

“I do. After all, I usually win.” That earns him a quick smile. Good. This isn’t going to turn into a therapy session.

(Once Erik tried that with a Freudian in Paris who predictably thought it the problem went back to his mother. It did, of course, but not in any way Sigmund would have anticipated.)

Though it’s warm for a fire, one blazes in the hearth, and the light paints Charles’ face softly gold. Erik takes the magazine from unresisting hands, tosses it aside, and kneels in front of the armchair. He runs his palms up Charles’ thighs and relishes the quick, indrawn breath this causes.

What Charles says, though, dampens the mood for a moment. “No matter how long it takes, we’ll work through this together.”

“Charles, listen to me.” Erik pushes Charles’ hands down to the arms of the chair, using his fingers to clamp his wrists there. “I know you believe you can change the world. Fix everyone and everything. But I’m not something for you to fix. This is who I have to be. I’ve accepted it. Can you? Because that’s our only hope. Please believe me, my friend.”

Charles slumps back slightly in the chair, his eyes searching Erik’s face. “’My friend.’ We’re still calling each other that.”

“It’s still true.” Love and friendship don’t seem like two separate conditions of being, not for them.

“Still true. Always true.” Charles takes a deep breath. “And I accept you, just as you are.”

Erik closes his eyes in relief. If he were a more hopeful man, he might even call this feeling joy. No, it can’t work forever, but at least they will have this time together. Tonight, if nothing more.

“I’m not actively listening to your thoughts, but there are things I can’t help knowing.” Asking Charles not to know something about your thoughts is like asking a sighted person with open eyes not to see. “But I can tell that you want to give up on us before we’ve properly begun.”

“Facing the inevitable isn’t the same as giving up.” As he speaks, Erik keeps his head bowed, his eyes shut. The wounded hope on Charles’ face isn’t something he can face.

“Do you think you’ll always be alone?”

Erik doesn’t know what to say. He has always been alone since the day the guards tore him from his parents’ side – until the moment under the waters when he heard Charles’ voice in his head for the first time. Yet falling in love has only illuminated the distance between any two souls, even theirs. “Isn’t everyone, in the end?”

Charles is silent for a moment before replying, a tacit, rare admission that he doesn’t have the answers for everything. At last he says, “I meant what I said to you last night. If you wanted me to see what you went through – to share it – I would do that.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Erik snaps, temper sparking.

However, it turns out Charles has his own steel. “I do know. Do you think I’ve never experienced another person’s pain? No, I’ve never endured the … vile, unspeakable violence that you endured. But I’ve seen more than you think I’ve seen. Felt more than you think I’ve felt. Rapes, beatings, abuse – there are moments I’ve glimpsed through other people that would horrify even you.”

Erik looks up now, surprised. Charles isn’t the only one capable of naivety; Erik must possess some of his own, to assume a telepath wouldn’t understand something about human nature. The sickness of this world is too vast for even Charles to ignore. Maybe their philosophies are more alike than Erik had dared to hope.

More evenly, Charles continues, “I know what I’m saying. You don’t ever have to show me what happened if you don’t want. But if you did – yes, I would go through that with you.”

“To what end?”

“So you wouldn’t be alone.”

Erik lifts his hands from Charles’ to pull him closer, fingers in his hair, so that they are forehead to forehead. He can’t speak at first – there aren’t words to accept or deny what he has been offered, willingly, knowingly. Finally, he manages, “No, Charles.”

“All right,” Charles murmurs as he rests his hands on Erik’s shoulders. Their lips are very close now. “All right.”

“I love you.”

“I love you. And I accept you, Erik. Every wound, every scar. We’ll find our way through this together.”

“We’ll try.”

A pause passes before Charles decides to accept that as a yes. “Good.” His thumbs make circles against Erik’s shoulders, warm through the thin fabric of his turtleneck.

Erik’s safe. It’s been so long since he felt safe.

“I said I’d show you how this can work,” Erik murmurs, focusing on Charles’ lips only inches away. “Will you let me show you?”

“Of course – ” Charles’ voice chokes off as Erik kisses the side of his throat. His words turn into something like a sigh as Erik keeps going, working his way up to the ear –

\--but then Charles’ hands slide downward to caress Erik’s back, and the cold weight threatens to settle over him again.

He pulls back. “You mustn’t.”

“Not even that?” Charles asks gently.

“The less the better.” Erik can’t explain this; it’s etched in him so early and deep that it defies words. “Let me take care of you. It’s enough, for me.”

Silently, Charles nods. A shiver passes through him, one Erik recognizes in far too many ways: surrender.

The heat of it flows through Erik, mercury rising, and thank God he doesn’t have to hold back any longer. He can’t resist the pull one second more.

Erik kisses him once, roughly, before tugging Charles’ sweater over his head and tossing it aside. Again with the undershirt. Too many layers between Erik and what he wants. But in another instant, that’s gone too, lying on the thick embroidered rug in front of the fire. As he takes off each of Charles’ slippers – one then the other, a long caress in the arch of each foot – Erik murmurs, “Get up. Take everything else off.”

Charles does what he asks. His hands shake with desire – from holding back the caresses he can’t give – and so it takes a few clumsy moments for his trousers and briefs to join the rest of the clothes on the floor.

This is the first time he’s seen Charles entirely naked. Erik’s eyes sweep hungrily up and down his body – trim yet well-muscled, hairy-chested, and so perfectly proportioned that Charles seems taller without his clothing. His cock is hard, flushed dark against the pale skin of his abdomen, clearly yearning for Erik’s touch.

“You’re beautiful,” Erik whispers, walking around Charles, first touching him along his smooth back. Charles shudders, but he doesn’t break his promise. He remains still, waiting for more.

Slowly Erik caresses every inch, keeping his eyes locked with Charles the whole time. His fingers find the hard curve of bone at Charles’ hip; his palms stroke the muscles of his arms and his belly. He takes Charles’ cock in his hands but only for a moment – only long enough to hear Charles suck in a breath, and to revel in his lover’s total obedience. Then Erik pushes Charles gently backward until his shoulders make contact with the wall. They’re very near the fire now, so much that Erik can feel the flickering along the side of his face. He wants Charles to be warm.

Then Erik drops to his knees.

Charles groans as Erik takes him in his mouth. Fills him up. He’s thought of this taste all day. Charles’ fists work at his sides for a moment, and then he reaches upward, clutching hold of an old candle sconce on the wall. It’s as if he has to bind himself to keep his hands away. Erik can’t resist a glance upward. Naked, arms extended above, he might be a medieval St. Sebastian, laid open to the piercing arrows of his fate. Both the restraint and the passion behind it make Erik even wilder.

He sucks deep and hard, working Charles with his tongue, eager for the salt he now tastes on his tongue. Erik’s hands push Charles’ legs open wider; now he can use his fingers to push inside, and Charles cries out in mingled pleasure and longing.

It’s the sound that does it – the sound of Charles so close to the brink. Erik’s cock throbs with need, almost hurting again, and he knows he has to come. He wants to come with Charles, and yet he can’t – or maybe –

Erik pulls up, rising to his feet as he caresses Charles once more with his hand – then flips him around so that he’s facing the wall. Charles breathes in sharply, but he doesn’t resist in any way.

Now Erik can wrap one arm around Charles’ chest and bring the other to Charles’ slick cock, now slippery enough to be pumped in urgent rhythm. Erik can thrust his still-clothed pelvis against Charles’ ass, the rounded muscles firm even through his slacks. Charles splays his arms against the wall, trying to steady them both or hold on or stop himself from coming, but Erik knows he can’t, no more than Erik can himself. He’s jerking up against Charles, hearing his moans, imagining his cock pushing into Charles just like this, it could be just like this but even hotter and better but nothing is better than the feel of Charles’ body against his –

Charles cries out, spilling hot into Erik’s hand, and Erik lets go too. It’s still too distant, too weak, but the rush flushes his skin, makes him moan. And he shared this with Charles, didn’t he? There’s nothing more beautiful than the feeling of Charles coming in Erik’s arms. He presses his lips to the back of Charles’ neck, tasting a soft sheen of sweat.

Trembling, he turns Charles around into his embrace. Charles’ arms wrap around his neck, and for a long time they simply stand there in front of the fire, letting the spasms wash through them.

Erik’s keenly aware that he’s still clothed, a stain spreading on the front of his pants, a sticky mess in his shorts as if he were a mere boy. Charles can’t find the moment nearly as erotic as he does. This can’t possibly compare to a night of unrestrained lovemaking.

But Charles caresses the side of his face as he whispers, “Is it all right if I kiss you?”

“Yes.”

For the longest time, they simply hold one another in front of the fire – still standing, Erik dressed while Charles remains naked – kissing each other as if it would be the only time. Erik forgets to be ashamed.

And he doesn’t hate himself until almost an hour later, when he’s in his bed alone with the nightmares.

**

They settle into a pattern during the next few weeks, one that would appear strange to any observer but that soon begins to feel natural.

Erik awakes in his own room alone. Whatever he has dreamed – if he was even able to sleep – he places it in the far corner of his mind, solders the seal, attempts to forget about it. If Charles senses his distress, he’s good enough not to intrude.

They see one another for the first time at breakfast. Erik has fallen slightly in love with that daily ritual … the smell of coffee and the chatter of teenagers and the moment when he first sees Charles, rumpled and drowsy, smiling at him.

The majority of the day is spent training, building equipment – preparing the students, and themselves, for what is to follow. Erik knows that Charles still believes they’re readying themselves for service rather than warfare, but he also trusts that when humanity’s ugliness can no longer be denied, when the hour of battle is at hand, Charles will be at his side. He enjoys the training immensely, because it’s the only time when he’s capable of forgetting himself – or, when he does remember, that he knows he’s actively fighting back at Shaw, whether Shaw knows it yet or not.

But once in a while, during the day, if they wind up in the Danger Room together when the students run late, or pass one another in the hallway when nobody is around, they steal a moment. Charles always begins with a stroke along the arm, or an embrace … never even kissing Erik without tacitly seeking permission. Once granted, though – they wrap around each other, devour each other, drink in the taste of the kiss for long minutes, or mere seconds, whatever they have. Charles’ gift tells him when to step back and smooth Erik’s hair, just before the students walk by.

In the evenings, they find ways to be alone. Their chess games usually bore the students into wandering off – and have acquired the power of foreplay. Erik can hardly look over the chessboard at Charles’ waiting face without feeling his pulse quicken.

But they always play the game. Erik studies every move as if, put together, they will give him a map into Charles’ complicated mind. Charles does his best to avoid Erik’s stratagems – and usually fails, proving he doesn’t use his telepathy to cheat.

That, or having Erik near is a distraction. Erik likes that idea.

During the match, their conversation deepens, turns playful or practical by turns, and then falls into anticipatory silence. Black versus white for the game: It’s battle and courtship at once. They invariably play to the very end.

The word “checkmate” is usually a whisper, and silenced immediately by a kiss.

Then Erik takes over.

It’s all a compromise in some ways – some of the ways that matter most – but Erik tells himself it doesn’t matter if Charles is happy. He does his best to make that so. This kind of acceptance, this kind of love – Erik never expected to have this in his life. As long as they can make this work, he intends to hold on tight.

One evening, however, the pattern breaks.

Over dinner, the idea of a nation-state for mutants is proposed. It’s a purely academic exercise; right now, they’re very far from uniting more than a handful of their kind. Some parallels are drawn to Israel that make Erik uncomfortable on a number of levels, until Charles steers the conversation into more fantastical waters. He encourages the students to make parallels to faraway kingdoms and mythical lands. They all begin speculating on how far back mutants go, what parts they play in history and myth. Which legends can they claim? Joan of Arc? Merlin? Isis?

It’s Erik’s turn to wash up, so he reaches the study last. The hi-fi is on, tuned to the opera Charles loves so well, and Erik tolerates, so long as it isn’t Wagner. This is something he actually likes – Bizet, “The Pearl Fishers.” As the music flows through the room, Charles is sprawled on the floor, surrounded by a few dusty books he’s pulled from the lower shelves.

“Whatever are you looking for, my friend?” Erik asks.

“Anything about Prester John.” Charles rolls onto his back, frowning at the book now propped open on his chest. “Didn’t his kingdom have a name? I can’t think of it, but it might be in here.”

Erik sits on the floor by Charles’ side. Charles looks positively boyish, curious and determined. “Then don’t stop until you find it.”

“Here.” Charles tugs at Erik’s hand, pulling him closer. “Listen with me.”

So Erik lies on the floor and pillows his head on Charles’ belly. Charles keeps reading, though his fingers brush lazily through Erik’s hair. The duet “au fond du temple saint” fills the room, majestic and beautiful, and Erik relaxes into the music and Charles’ touch.

(There will be times – decades from now, once they are enemies of old standing, after they have hurt and maimed and nearly murdered one another – when Erik thinks of that half-hour in the study as the greatest moment of unalloyed happiness he has ever known.)

He glances over, smiling softly, at the sound of Charles closing his book. As Charles lays it aside, Erik asks, “Did you find the kingdom of Prester John?”

“Not its name.” Charles trails his fingers lower, until they caress the side of Erik’s face.

“Shall we play chess tonight?” The huskiness in Erik’s voice surprises him. “Or you could simply lie still where you are – ”

“Could we talk?”

Caught off-guard, Erik nods. He suspects he knows where this is leading, but it’s as if his body is too weary to tense again, as if the music and Charles’ caresses have lulled him past that. The rapture of the deep.

After taking a deep breath, Charles says, “You know that I love you. And I accept you just as you are.”

“I love you too.”

“But do you accept me?”

“What do you mean?”

“When we’re together – Erik, it’s as if you go away completely. I don’t pry, you know I don’t, but I can’t help but feel it. When you climax, it’s as if … as if you’re trying not to exist.”

“It’s nothing to do with you.” Erik rolls onto one side, away from Charles.

But Charles curls behind him, one hand on Erik’s arm. “It’s everything to do with me, because I love you.”

“I told you not to try to fix me.”

“If I saw you bleeding in a ditch, I’d bandage you. If I saw you starving, I’d feed you. How can I not want to help you now?” Charles’ sigh is a soft puff of warmth against Erik’s neck. “I don’t want to change this for me, Erik. You’ve made me very happy. I want to change it for you. I want to make you happy in return. I want – I want you not to be afraid of me.”

Erik shuts his eyes tightly. Damn Shaw for lacing every touch with poison. Damn him for reaching through Erik to hurt Charles, too.

Someday Shaw will pay.

“Erik?” Charles is more tentative now. “Please don’t be so angry. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I’m not angry with you.” Erik pulls Charles’ arm around him, and for a while they lie together in the uneasy embrace. As badly as Erik wants to push this aside, he instead struggles for the words Charles deserves. Finally he says, “I’ve tried. Don’t you think I’ve tried?”

“Not with me.”

Charles remains the more naïve. Erik manages not to laugh at him. “Do you think love changes everything, my friend? If it did, it all would have been different for us from the first time we touched.”

“Love has its limitations,” Charles admits. “But it’s my gift we should be using.”

“Your telepathy.” A thought – one Erik fantasized about, furtively, in the days before they’d ever kissed – but one he’s dismissed. “It never has before.”

“Because it became very clear, very early, that I should be careful about asking too much of you. I’m asking now. Will you try coming to bed with me, and see if what I can do makes a difference? It might.”

The possibility is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. “It might not.”

“If it doesn’t, we’ll stop. You’ll still be in control, Erik. I promise you that.”

Erik doesn’t want this for his own sake. But for Charles –

“All right,” he says. “We’ll try.”

**

 

TBC --


	3. Erik

Everything in Erik’s mind tells him to run from Charles’ bedroom. That’s why he has to stay.

He’s afraid of hating Charles – worse, of hurting Charles – but the thought of using telepathy together in bed has intrigued him. Ever since those earliest days, when he showed Shaw what he could do and bent metal at his will, Erik has believed that mutant powers went beyond the realm of mere human concerns. Are they not gods among insects? Are there, perhaps, no limits to what their abilities can do?

Charles shuts the heavy wooden door, turns the lock. Although Erik understands this is meant not to trap him inside, but to keep potentially curious teenagers out, he has never liked that sound, key turning tumblers. He remembers it too well.

“We can unlock it if you need to,” Charles promises. “Go somewhere else. Or just stop. I meant what I said. You’re in control here.”

“And after you tap into my mind?”

“You’ll be freer than before.” He’s so sincere, so hopeful. Erik has to smile at how much within Charles remains a boy – even here, or especially here, a few feet from his childhood model airplanes.

Charles begins undressing first, perhaps meaning to be the only one naked, as usual. But tonight is meant to be different, so Erik reaches for his belt, slides leather from brass. He notices the widening of Charles’ eyes, the eagerness as he sees Erik unbuttoning his shirt. Although Erik wants to go to Charles and finish stripping him – he’s become good at that these past weeks – he knows this is about being open to Charles, as Charles is open to him. That means being open to his gaze, too.

So he lets his trousers drop to the floor, then pushes down his boxers and steps out of them. He’s never been entirely naked in front of Charles before; this, at least, Erik might have done for his lover. It would have been worth it, Erik realizes, as he sees Charles harden at the mere sight of him.

“Erik.” For a moment unable to speak, Charles swallows hard. “Let’s – ah – let’s get into bed.”

Erik slips between the covers, grateful for the sheets over him; he feels like some fool provincial virgin in his belated modesty. The feeling increases when Charles takes his place beside him, the lone lamp on the wall briefly silhouetting the lines of his torso and leg through the white cotton. Despite the beauty of Charles’ body, it’s all Erik can do not to shrink back.

But Charles simply takes one of Erik’s hands. “All right. Let’s get used to this.”

Erik takes a deep breath in an effort to relax, though his muscles remain tense. It reminds him, perversely, of the day they met – of the way he gasped for air after he and Charles broke the surface of the water. “You’re always trying to rescue me.”

“I’ve only done it the once.”

“More than that, if only you knew.”

Charles smiles, conspiratorial, as he folds his other arm beneath his pillow. “Will you tell me what it was like that day, for you?”

“Tell you, or show you?”

“Tell me. You can show me later, if you want.”

That answer surprises Erik, who prefers to rely on his powers whenever possible. Charles does too – Erik knows this about him even if Charles doesn’t – but of course, that’s beside the point. This is about easing Erik into the moment.

He searches for the words. “I knew I would rather die than live in a world where Shaw got away with it. I’d done my best to stop him and failed. Dying while I fought him – it seemed as much as I could ask for.”

Cold water rushing around him. His lungs aching within his chest. The steel of the submarine prickling along his skin, so close but too far away. Wavering light from above growing fainter as the buzzing in his ears grew louder.

“And then I heard your voice – and I wasn’t alone.”

“You must have known there were more of us.”

“Of course. But none of them were with me.” Erik rubs his thumb along Charles’ wrist. “You were with me before I ever saw you.”

An arm reaching around him. The warmth of another body amid the frigid ocean. The light overhead brightening, and then that first desperate gasp of air. His first glimpse of Charles, wet hair slicked to his forehead, spitting seawater, towing him along. The sense of trust that Erik had not felt for another person since childhood.

From the way Charles’ expression softens, Erik can tell some of his memories are filtering through. There’s a luster to the way he smiles across the pillow, a shine brighter than any silver. Charles murmurs, “Will you touch me?”

This is not unlike their other nights together, which Erik finds reassuring. He reaches down to fold his fingers around Charles’ erection, warm in his palm. As he brushes his thumb along the tip, he relishes the sharp breath Charles draws in between his teeth. “You love this.”

“I do.”

Erik tightens his hold, begins to stroke –

\--and he feels what Charles feels.

It’s not exactly as if someone is stroking him in return, but Erik can feel precisely what it’s like for Charles: the roughness of his skin, the tightness of his grip, the shivers of pleasure rushing up into his gut, the sheer happiness he finds in surrender. The swell of blood and heat inside.

Erik has experienced all these sensations before, but from the wretched distance his subconscious has placed between him and any sexual pleasure. Through Charles’ mind, though – there’s no filter. The feelings rush through him like a river breaking through a dam.

“All right?” Charles whispers.

“My God.” Erik finds it difficult to breathe, much less speak. “Yes. All right.”

“Keep going.”

Erik slides his hands on either side of Charles’ hips and lowers his mouth. When he takes Charles between his lips, the heat seems to swallow him too. He licks, sucks, deeper and harder than before, because now he can tell exactly what Charles likes. The taste of salt is thick on his tongue, and the fear is very far away. There’s no need to escape, no need to erase himself. He can be here. He can feel this.

Charles is gasping, perhaps beyond speech, so Erik hears the voice in his head: _Can I touch you?_

 _Yes._

Fingers weave into Erik’s hair, and Charles brings his face up for a heated, sloppy kiss. Then they’re embracing, naked body against naked body for the first time, and their cocks brush against one another. The pleasure of it ricochets through Charles, slams into Erik, and before he knows it, his arms are wrapped around Charles as they move together. The motions are instinctive, unlikely to give release on their own, but even this is more than Erik’s done with true enjoyment – ever, in his life.

Then the connection between them deepens – Charles opening wider, reaching farther – and something new fills Erik’s mind: Charles’ love for him.

Erik had never imagined, not once, that he could mean to Charles what Charles meant to him. How different and yet how beautiful another person’s love appeared from the inside out. He sees himself through Charles’ eyes – more handsome and noble than he could ever pretend to be, and yet his true self, too. His best self. The person he is only with Charles.

When Charles’ hand finds Erik’s cock, Erik feels no urge to fight. This is not an attacker or a brute. This is not even another person. This is Charles, who is another part of his soul.

Charles presses them together in his grip, so that their movements create friction. Sensation. Blast-furnace heat. Erik realizes he’s moaning – dear God, they must hear him throughout the entire mansion –

“They’re sleeping,” Charles whispers in his ear. Their skin has become sweaty, so his cheek is damp and hot against Erik’s temple. “I made sure – ohh – made sure they were sleeping.”

Erik realizes he’s going to come, that he can come, and as fast as he feels the pure delight of that, he wants more. He fills his mind with the fantasy that has exhilarated and tortured him ever since the day they met: Fucking Charles, taking him from behind, spilling into his body –

 _I want you,_ Charles thinks, and their shared excitement wells up so that for a moment Erik is on the verge of losing control.

But he hangs on. Charles kisses him again, even more feverishly than before, then rolls over onto his side, pressing his back against Erik’s chest, his ass against Erik’s cock. Erik kisses his spine, thrusts against him, before pushing Charles onto his belly. Instantly Charles splays his legs wide – between that and the surge of pure need Erik feels from him, he might as well be begging.

Erik works Charles with his hand, getting him ready, pushing his fingers in far enough to elicit a groan of carnal pleasure. The moment is near. There’s some petroleum jelly in the nightstand that will do, so he slicks his hand, his cock, and all within Charles. His old fears aren’t gone – he can sense them at a very great distance, as if they were scraping at the outside of a window wishing to be let in – but the bulwark of Charles’ mind stands firm. Mutation has again saved Erik, made him strong.

Then he gets onto his knees, pulls Charles’ pelvis up from the mattress, and thrusts inside.

It feels so good he can hardly stand it – and there’s Charles’ pleasure too, equally as overwhelming, and the combination of it makes Erik gape, mouth open, so that he can hardly move. But he does move, pushing further and further, making Charles claw at the mattress, until he’s sunk in Charles as deep as he can go.

Erik manages to whisper, “I love you.”

“And I love you. Now, please, God, fuck me.”

His innocent Charles, gone carnal. A fierce smile spreads across Erik’s face as he begins pumping into him. Experiencing both sides of the sensations removes him from the here and now, from anything in the world except his lover. His fingers dig into the softer flesh at Charles’ hips; sweat dripping from his hair spatters onto the pale English skin of Charles’ back with every movement. Charles pushes back, bracing himself on his forearms and knees, equally active, equally desperate. Heat erases everything else. The whole earth comprises only Charles and him, their joining, their emotions, the collision of spirit and body.

But it’s so good that it can’t last long.

As the kick fills him, the moment of inevitability, Erik gasps, “I can’t wait.”

“Don’t try – come for me, Erik, come for me and I’ll follow – ”

Another thrust, then another, tightness and heat and pressure all he knows, until Erik feels it slam into him. As he bursts into Charles, he feels Charles ride that same wave to his own climax, which somehow makes it even more intense, until Erik can’t see, can’t speak, can only mingle his voice with Charles’ as they cry out.

Erik collapses atop Charles, panting for breath. Charles’ voice is ragged as he says, “Good?”

“My God. It was – you know what it was.”

They separate their bodies, hot wet mess, and then Charles wraps himself around Erik as they kiss for what seems like forever. Erik wishes it could last that long. He’s done it – broken through those invisible barriers, with Charles’ help – and now nothing seems impossible.

Has he not, in one sense, already, finally, beaten Shaw? Taken back something he thought Shaw had stolen forever?

 _I hoped this would help,_ Charles thinks with his tongue still in Erik’s mouth. _I hardly dreamed we’d come so far tonight._

 _Nor I.  
_  
As their mouths part, sticky and warm, Charles murmurs, “I wanted this so much. For myself, but for you too.”

“For once, my friend, dare to be selfish.” Erik could laugh out loud for pure joy.

Charles grins. His cheeks are flushed, his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat the way Erik once saw it with seawater. “I think we should send the kids on a field trip soon. Niagara Falls for a weekend, perhaps.” His hands run over Erik’s chest, his still-warm cock, his ass – every place Erik denied him access before. “You and I could bring a tray of food up here, and not leave the suite for the whole two days.”

“A field trip. Yes. Of course. But why Niagara Falls? I like the idea of – the Grand Canyon. That would take at least a week.”

“Or maybe a grand tour of Europe?”

Then they’re laughing, silly, weak with release and relief.

Erik decides he can even sleep by Charles’ side, something he hasn’t dared since that first night before they’d done more than kiss. This is what it feels like to be in love. Better yet, this is what it feels like to win. Something Shaw and his Nazi clientele meant to batter from a young boy’s body has been reclaimed and made new.

So he takes Charles into his arms and strokes his back as they fall asleep. His last thought, before drifting into unconsciousness, is that in some sense, his greatest battle has already been fought to victory.

And Erik sleeps very easily and happily, until the nightmares begin.


	4. Charles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter requires extra trigger warnings for the stuff in the tags.

Charles normally knows when he’s gone too far.

Since some accidental mayhem in early adolescence, he’s been aware that there are very few limits on what he can do – but there should be. He tries to set those limits for himself. And yes, there are times he’s gone into a mind and changed something radical without permission, but he likes to think he carefully considered each case and decided for the best. There have been occasions where he reached in, realized the impact was too great or unpredictable, and let go again. So he’s capable of restraining himself.

Of course, there have been other occasions, when he recognized the danger too late, cursed himself for a meddler and a tyrant, and did his best to deal with the resulting damage. He tells himself that even he can only learn by doing, but sometimes the shadows haunt him late at night.

With Erik, though – there, he had consent. Full cooperation. The need was as clear as the path. It ought to have been fine. Better than fine: Healing, even miraculous.

Their night together seemed to deliver on all that promise and then some, and Charles had dozed off with his head pillowed on Erik’s shoulder and no small amount of satisfaction.

Then, as he sleeps, he tastes ash.

He looks up into a sky without color – too pale to be gray, too bleak to be white, and without any hint of blue. Cold, loose mud slithers through the weak seams of boots he has almost outgrown. Shivering, he spits the grit from his mouth … before realizing, with a shudder, what the ash is. The faces of the people in the boxcar with him loom in his mind, turned to smoke, oil and grit now, and he wonders which of them is bitter on his tongue.

“ _Komm mit mir_ ,” Shaw says. The man’s face is thin, his nose pinched almost to nothingness by the spectacles he wears. Grayish light reflects off the lenses and hides the eyes. A friendly hand is held out as if to lead him along, but really it is a mockery of fatherhood, of the father already lost. “ _Willst du etwas Neues lernen_?”

Ahead is a tall gray building, not the crematorium but almost as terrifying. He digs his heels in, but the mud is too slick to provide any traction and there’s no metal close by for him to brace himself. Shaw laughs as he drags him forward –

The brutal slap across Charles’ face awakens him. Skin stinging, mind dazed, he has to blink a few times before he can see Erik above him. Erik’s face is a mask, but Charles can feel the turmoil there … guilt, loss, fear and above all, fury.

“You made it go away,” Erik says. He’s breathing hard. “For an hour, you made it all go away.”

“You know what I did.” Charles is confused. He didn’t erase or even suppress Erik’s memory. The nightmare – Erik’s nightmare, shared between their two minds – should be proof enough of that. “Erik, what’s wrong?”

The reply comes as a snarl: “You didn’t make me forget. You made me want to forget. That’s worse.”

Now, at least, Charles understands the guilt radiating from Erik in waves. He tries to reach up for Erik’s hand, to soothe him with a touch. As much as he’d like to make Erik be calm, he knows using his powers right now would be a grievous error.

Erik jerks away, stumbling from the bed. He begins dressing himself, though it’s still the dead of night. “We should never have done this.”

Charles remembers how they were only hours ago – ecstatic, exhilarated, united – and it makes the rejection sting worse. It’s as if the happy lovers in this room were turned into ghosts. “Please. Don’t go away angry. Talk with me.”

“You were dreaming my dreams.” Erik rezips, buttons, belts. He is sealing himself away from Charles in every manner possible. A few feet away, the key turns in the bedroom door lock. “I did that to you. No, I let Shaw do that to you.”

The slap is explained; that at least had nothing to do with anger. “It’s all right. Or – it will be, it can be – ”

“It can’t. You don’t understand that. You never will.” With that, Erik stalks out the door.

In the dawn hours of solitude that follow, Charles sits in his bed, forearms braced on his knees. Rejection and hurt keep welling up, like blood from a cut that needs stitching, but he tries to push past that. Yes, Erik’s angry departure has wounded him, but Charles needs to focus on the fact that Erik is the one in greater pain, for reasons that go back much farther than last night.

Really, he ought to have foreseen this. Allowing Erik to experience pleasure through him, re-channeling Erik’s own pleasure back to him through his own mind – it all worked beautifully. But the demons of the subconscious are not so easily erased. At the first hint that they could someday be exorcised, they would strike back more savagely than ever.

Erik must be in hell, and Charles can’t even go to him.

He sits there for what feels like forever, taunted by the smell of sex on the rumpled sheets. By breakfast time, Charles is exhausted and miserable. After showering and dressing – not his usual dapper attire, just the first items he lays his hands on – he goes down to breakfast. Never has he been as jarred to hear laughter and music, or to see Raven doing her best Patsy Cline imitation to “I Fall to Pieces.” He has to admit, she’s really got the face down. Looks just like the album cover.

“Wow, you slept late,” Armando says through a mouthful of cereal. “Guess you don’t get to nag at us for being tardy to practice today.”

“Don’t try me.” Charles does his best to smile, like it’s a joke. Erik isn’t in the kitchen. Is he even still at the school? He envisions Erik driving off in the dead of night, never to return – but no, Charles can sense him near. His mind is impervious to any gentle touch, so sealed off is it by shock and disappointment, but it’s unmistakably Erik.

“Well, you can nag him.” Armando points at the doorway as Erik walks in. Unlike Charles, he looks even neater than usual – as if he’s chosen his best clothes as a kind of armor against the day.

Their eyes meet, and the silent desolation there makes Charles want to cry.

A new song starts, and Angel immediately dives for the volume dial, turning it up. “I love this one!”

Normally Charles doesn’t much care what the kids listen to, but really, did it have to be “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” Goddammed Shirelles.

The meal goes much like any other, albeit without either Charles or Erik saying a word to each other; Erik almost doesn’t speak at all. Once, Charles detects a moment of doubt from Hank, the most sensitive of the kids. He’s picked up on something, though he has no idea what, and his eyes move between his two teachers uncertainly. Charles quickly asks him about his work on the Banshee suit, which proves to be enough of a distraction for the time being.

When it’s over, Erik slips out before anyone else. It’s Alex’s turn to tidy up, but Charles takes over and tells him to handle it tomorrow instead; he needs something to do, something useful that can’t hurt anyone.

**

A few hours later, Charles finally leaves his study for the grounds. It’s a beautiful spring day; the air is warm, the breeze as gentle as a caress. He sits on a small hillock where he can watch the boys – they’re meant to be running, but instead they’re playing a game of catch with some bizarre flying disc Hank found in a store. It improves coordination, Charles supposes. There’s no need to interrupt anybody actually enjoying the afternoon.

Then he hears/feels Erik coming up behind him. Determinedly Charles doesn’t move or turn around. Erik has to be the one in control.

(And though he knows how necessary this is for Erik, why Erik needs it so badly, it makes Charles feel so powerless. It’s a rare sensation for him, and he hates it.)

Erik settles onto the grass beside Charles, and for a few seconds they just watch the game. Finally Erik says, “You must despise me.”

“Never that.” Charles glances sideways. “I thought you despised me.”

“For a while this morning, I did. But the fault was in me, not in you.”

“What fault do you mean?” Surely Erik cannot blame himself for what was done to him. Shaw can’t have twisted him up that badly inside.

There’s no answer at first, only the distant laughter that floats up the hill from the game below. Erik plucks at blades of grass between his fingers before he says, “Do you know when I fell in love with you?”

“Probably the same moment I fell in love with you. When I found that memory of your parents.”

“Yes. The same moment.” Erik finally looks over at Charles then, and his caution softens, letting more emotion through. He’s still angry, still upset, but now looking to Charles for understanding instead of turning away. “You made me infinitely more powerful that day. By giving me back that memory of my mother and father, you allowed me to take control of my abilities.”

Control will always matter so much to Erik. “I’m glad I could do that, my friend.”

“But last night – ” Erik struggles for words. “The anger was too far away. And I need my anger. I need the power it gives me. It sickened me to feel satisfied – to feel so stupidly happy – when Shaw still lives and gloats over his crimes.”

“Do you really think you’ll ever stop hating Shaw? It’s impossible, surely.” Charles, who has never met the man, will hate him until his last breath.

“Surely. But last night was the first time that I couldn’t reach it –”

“Only the first time your hate didn’t control you.” There are manipulations besides the telepathic, and Charles isn’t above using them for Erik’s own good. “You’ve begun to master it. There will be a time to stop Shaw. To do justice. If your hatred destroys you before that’s done – if you let him cripple you – no matter when you stop him, he’ll already have won.”

Erik considers that. They sit in silence for what seems like a very long time, not moving. Charles can feel that Erik wants to believe him – that he will, given time – but this needs a while to sink in. Together they’re undoing the work done by vicious abuse and years of loneliness. It can’t happen in a day.

Well. It could.

Charles says, “When I shared your dream last night – it was more memory than dream, wasn’t it?”

“I hate knowing you had to see that.”

“I hate knowing you had to live through it.” He must approach this carefully. “You know – you must realize that I could take the worst of that away.” As Erik opens his mouth to protest, Charles holds up a hand. “I’d never make you forget it all. Your parents deserve to be remembered. What Shaw did must be brought to account. But – the brothels, what was done to you there – I could erase that. Or blur it, at least.”

“Charles, no.”

“You don’t deserve those scars. You shouldn’t have to bear it.”

“I have borne it. And I wish to remember that I have.” But Erik speaks gently; he even smiles. “You put too much faith in forgetting.”

Charles nods. He expected this, but he’s disappointed nonetheless. It would have been something he could do to Shaw, some small way of unmaking Shaw’s dark work and compensating for the terrors visited on Erik 20 years ago.

But there’s something within Erik – a vast uncertainty, fear and hope commingled. Charles leans closer. “What is it, Erik?”

“You’ve already seen part of it. I think – I think I need you to see the rest.” Erik closes his eyes. “What I’m asking of you – it’s too much, and yet – ”

“No more than I told you I was willing to do.” Still, Charles is surprised. “What changed your mind?”

“I don’t want anything to come between us. Not Shaw. Not misunderstandings. Nothing.”

Charles holds out his hand – unnecessary, and yet he suspects they’ll both need it. Erik says, “Now? Here?”

“It won’t be easier anywhere else. And I don’t think either of us wants to wait.” Given the boys’ distraction with their game, or the girls’ schedule in the Danger Room today, the lawn is as private as anyplace within the mansion would be. And Charles thinks they should have the sun shining down on them, the smell of fresh grass all around. They need reminders that their present, and their future, is far lovelier than Erik’s past.

Erik takes a deep breath. It seems to Charles that clouds thicken the sky overhead, because he can no longer see the light.

He tastes ash.

His mother is screaming, reaching out for him as they drag her through the gate, and he cries so hard that it hurts his throat and his gut. He reaches for her, power curling through his bones of his hand, wire bending, and a half-dozen guards can’t hold him back, not until they hit him so hard he smells blood and blacks out.

Shaw is holding a gun on his mother, and tells him to move the coin, and he tries and he tries and he can feel the metal on his fingertips, too close but too far away, and then the gun goes off and he feels hot spatters on his back as his mother falls to the ground.

He’s on his hands and knees in a brothel cell, concrete rough against his palms, shaking as the guard’s hand clamps around his throat, to hold him in place, to make him afraid he won’t be able to breathe, and he can hear a woman screaming in pain next door, and then it’s begun and he’s screaming too, and between grunts the guard says he loves to hear him scream.

Hunger is clawing at him like a beast he’d swallowed whole that is using its long talons to carve its way out again, and he can’t remember the last time he had more than half a moldy roll to eat, and Shaw cuts into a steak so hot it’s steaming, with a knife he wants to lift from Shaw’s hand and stab him with, but it won’t move, and Shaw smiles in satisfaction while taking a bite of meat rare enough to drip blood.

The brothels have stopped scaring him, because he’s learned to go away, to leave his body behind so the pain is distant and his mind is free, but this time it isn’t one of the guards, it’s Shaw, and he says that he hears that some of the guards prefer this boy who has learned so much, and it’s time to see for himself, but not Shaw, anyone but Shaw, but there’s no way out of the cell.

There’s no way out.

Then Charles squeezes Erik’s fingers tightly, and they open their eyes at the same moment. Sunlight blinds Charles through his tears. Both of them are lying flat on the ground, clutching each other’s hands. If any of the boys looked up right now, all their secrecy would count for nothing. So Charles makes sure they don’t.

“I thought I needed you not to see.” Erik’s voice is hoarse. “But I was wrong.”

“Oh, my friend. I’m so sorry.” The words are beyond inadequate, so Charles follows them with a rush of the sorrow he feels. But Erik, he realizes, has not wanted sympathy. Within Erik’s mind, Charles finds – pain, yes, but above all relief.

He no longer has to carry it alone.

“Sometime,” Erik says, slow and determined, “not tonight, I think, but sometime soon, I want to come to your bed again. Feel what you feel. I’ll learn to handle it. You too.”

“Are you sure?”

Erik turns his head sideways. Tears stain his cheeks too, but he’s smiling. “Oh, yes.”

Charles’ hand tightens around Erik’s, and the emotion welling between them now is stronger than all the fear, all the pain.

**

Charles believes that Erik is learning to balance the ugliness and beauty in his life, that he is leaning toward the light. There’s real satisfaction there, almost contentment. He can feel within Erik such love, such confidence, that there’s no doubt in Charles’ mind that his friend is stronger than ever before.

Erik knows he’s stronger than ever before. Because he’s showed Charles what Shaw really is, how much there is to hate, Charles will understand more than he did before. He’ll stop trying to steer Erik toward “peace of mind” now that he sees it’s impossible. Instead, Charles will fight alongside him to defeat Shaw – whether in battle or in bed.

Only two people desperately in love could misunderstand each other so terribly.

They lie there, holding hands and looking upward into the blue, as the waters close above them.

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who has read, given kudos and commented! Would love to hear any and all thoughts.


End file.
